


Second Time Around

by alchemise



Category: Daredevil (TV), Jessica Jones (TV), Luke Cage (TV), The Defenders (Marvel TV)
Genre: F/M, Getting Back Together, Hurt/Comfort, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-25
Updated: 2018-12-25
Packaged: 2019-09-26 19:51:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,189
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17148056
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alchemise/pseuds/alchemise
Summary: Luke and Jessica try to figure their shit out. Matt learns to accept help. They all mostly suck at it.





	Second Time Around

**Author's Note:**

  * For [chelseagirl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/chelseagirl/gifts).



> Takes place at some nebulous time after all their respective most recent seasons. Spoilers for all of them.
> 
> Happy Yuletide!

Luke wasn't sure what had woken him up. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary, and, as far as he could tell, he was alone in his apartment. The truth was, he'd only ever been alone in this apartment, ever since Claire had left and he'd had to get his own place. He hadn't figured out how to move on from her yet. 

Suddenly, he heard a noise: the slightest creak of the floor. Someone _was_ there.

He crept out of bed and moved as silently as he could toward the bedroom door. He figured it was best to surprise the intruder and get the jump on them, if necessary. Which, he thought, it usually was necessary.

As he threw open the bedroom door and launched himself into the living room, the last thing Luke expected was to find Jessica Jones standing there, putting away her lockpicks after having broken in. She didn't even have the decency to look startled.

Instead she shrugged and said, "Hey." Feigned nonchalance at its best, as always with Jessica.

Luke didn't want to admit that, while he didn't appreciate being woken up by a bit of B&E between friends, he was glad to see her. She looked good, better than he'd last seen her anyway, after everything at Midland Circle. "What are you doing here, Jess?" He didn't bother asking how she knew where he lived.

"Looking for your girlfriend, actually. I need her help." She gave a little shrug again, but he could tell she was on edge. "Yours too, I guess."

"What's wrong?"

"You know how Murdock's back from the dead and all?"

Luke had spotted Matt on the news, shortly after Wilson Fisk had returned to prison: some reporter asking for his take on Fisk's repeated fall from grace. Matt had been dressed in his lawyer garb, with his partner—and Luke's own former lawyer—Franklin Nelson by his side. Matt had been very much alive, with no mention at all of those months he'd been missing. "Yeah, I haven't talked to him though."

"No shit. It's not like he bothered to tell any of us he was alive." Jessica sighed. "If we want to keep him that way, I need your and Claire's help. Where is she, anyway?"

 _Shit_. It was just their luck, Luke thought. "Claire left. A few months ago. It didn't work out. Guess I haven't talked to you in a while, either."

Jessica looked both disappointed and, oddly, relieved. "Great, guess it's on us then. Come on, and bring whatever medical supplies you've got on hand."

Luke walked toward the bathroom, calling over his shoulder as he went. "Well it's not like I need to keep much around, but Claire must have rubbed off on me; I've got a first aid kit around here somewhere. For anyone who might drop by. Also, you know you could have just knocked instead of breaking in."

He heard Jessica shout after him, "I was trying not to draw attention."

Luke threw on clothes more appropriate to whatever Jessica was about to drag him into and returned with the emergency kit. "Yeah, well, it's not like any of us are very good at that."

Jessica snorted and led the way out of the building.

When they reached the street, Jessica strode away purposefully. Luke could tell that she'd been trying to appear unworried in his apartment but was now clearly picking up the pace. He wondered how bad of shape Matt was in.

"Why didn't you just bring him to my place? If you thought Claire was there, that would've been faster than us going to him."

She didn't slow her pace as she replied, "The idiot pissed off a bunch of sex traffickers. Okay, _we_ pissed off a bunch of sex traffickers. Cops got wind of them after everything went down, and they're still in the area rounding up the last of fuckers. Like I said, I was trying not to draw attention. A woman walking down the street carrying a grown man isn't exactly subtle. Anyway, he's just a few blocks from here."

Luke felt alarmed; he hated not knowing about something in his neighborhood. "There were sex traffickers running right here out of Harlem?"

"Nah, not that I know of. I haven't been able to find where they're operating. Just got a line on one of their business deals tonight. They were meeting a buyer just north of here. Matt must have put the same information together. We both showed up at the buy, things went south. The usual." She then switched gears. "So what happened with Claire?"

He wasn't sure what she was getting at with the question, so he just gave her a testing look in response.

Jessica returned his look with one of her own. "Yeah, none of my business. Sorry." She turned down a smaller street that looked like it was mostly deliveries and stopped in front of a boarded-over former fish market. "We're here."

She moved along the side of the building and pulled back a large board she'd obviously used to hide a hole in a wall they could crawl through. There was barely any light inside, and Luke felt his way in the dark, trying to find his footing. The building still smelled like old fish and salt, who knew how many years after it had closed up shop.

A strained voice quietly called out in the darkness, "Do you have any idea how much noise you're making? Even without powers, I would've heard you a block away."

"You're the ninja, asshole, not us. Besides, who's here to help you?" The worry had disappeared entirely from Jessica's voice.

"I told you I didn't need any help," Matt said softly. 

Luke realized his eyes must have adjusted to the darkness, because now he could make out the shape of Matt, slumped in a corner. His 'death' apparently hadn't made him any less stubborn about working with other people. Luke and Jessica knelt down next to him and dug through the first aid kit. Luke could see a large shiny wet area on Matt's leg and two smaller ones on one of his arms and his chest. There was enough blood pooled on the floor to be worrying, but Matt at least seemed focused and alert.

Luke tried to hold his attention. "What happened? I don't remember hearing any gunshots; that would've woken me up."

Matt grunted out, "switchblade," just as Jessica tore his pants leg open to examine the wound. Luke saw that it was a long gash, twisted and ugly. Matt shut up immediately when she started poking at it, his breath coming through gritted teeth.

Jessica elaborated. "There were like ten of them. This idiot took them on himself, while I freed the people—fuck, they were just kids—those assholes were selling."

Matt apparently couldn't help himself and responded, "It worked, didn't it? The kids are free and the cops are rounding up the traffickers. It's just a little knife wound."

"You mean it was a little knife wound until you yanked the damn thing out and used it to fight off the guys who were beating your ass." Luke noted that she didn't sound entirely disapproving as she said it. It was one thing she and Matt had in common (and maybe Luke, himself, too if he was being honest): that willingness to throw self-preservation to the wind to help people who needed it. Not that Jessica would ever admit to it. He wondered what kind of crap she'd faced over the past year or so. His own life hadn't exactly been a walk in the park lately, and, while he and Jess hadn't kept in touch, he had seen snippets of Trish's downward spiral in the news. Knowing their lives, that hinted at a whole lot worse underneath that Jessica was probably in the middle of. Luke wished he had kept closer track of her, had been there to help with whatever she'd gone through.

Luke grabbed most of the gauze from the kit and pressed it firmly onto Matt's leg. Matt was clearly forcing himself to stay relatively still and quiet, in spite of the obvious pain. His other injuries could wait, but they needed to bandage the leg as best they could if they were going to get Matt out of there safely.

Jessica started applying tape to the gauze, helping Luke keep the pressure tight on the wound.

Luke looked down at Matt and saw that he'd stilled, either unconscious from the pain or—judging by his controlled, deep breathing—possibly meditating to deal with the injury. He'd seen Danny do the same thing before.

It seemed like as good a time as any to answer Jessica's earlier question.

"I fucked up with Claire. I went too far, let the anger drive me. Couldn't control it. Became something she couldn't… no, she shouldn't have to deal with."

"Yeah. Well who hasn't been there?" She was obviously talking about herself, and Luke, and Matt too, lying quietly with the bleeding from his leg now stopped. They all had been there. It was another thing they had in common and not one to be proud of. The dark side of the whole superpowered vigilante thing.

Luke wondered if Jessica had had similar problems with relationships; knowing her, he guessed it was likely. "What about you? Anyone in your life?"

Jessica gave her usual dismissive huff. "Not something I'm very good at, you know that. There was a guy, a good guy. It lasted a while, but…" She shrugged. He could imagine any number of explanations to fill in the blank.

He still thought about Jessica and the little bit of time they'd been good together. Before everything went to hell. As much as they were a disaster ultimately, there'd been something easier about being with someone else with powers, someone he was less likely to hurt. Physically, anyway.

Luke was about to ask Jessica her thoughts on the matter when Matt suddenly cocked his head, listening to something only he could hear and said, "I hate to interrupt this moment you're having, but there are two detectives headed this way." He paused and moved his head in that strange jerky way he did when he was trying to zero in on something. "They say they traced the traffickers back to their meet. Here. We've got maybe two minutes to get away. I'd rather not be here when they arrive."

Luke agreed and addressed Jessica, "I'll get us a car. It'll be the easiest way to get him somewhere safe. Can you get him out of here and meet me at the end of the street?"

"Fine, but he's not coming to my place."

"I'm right here, you know. Just take me home." Matt had plainly hit the end of his patience dealing with other people.

Luke moved as silently as he could back through the hole in the wall. He found an older car a block away without an alarm and easy enough to hotwire, driving it to the corner where he said he'd meet them. Jessica emerged out of the shadows, with Matt cradled in her arms. Luke could only imagine how annoyed both of them were at the sight they made. She gently bundled Matt into the back seat, both being cautious of his leg, but he still hissed out in pain as he stretched out on the seat. Then she joined Luke up front, and they headed out toward Matt's place.

Luke spent the drive trying to bring all of his thoughts together and figure out what he wanted to say to Jessica. A few blocks from Matt's place, he thought he'd worked things out.

"We shouldn't let this happen again. Losing touch, I mean." He glanced back at Matt, quiet and likely meditating again. "We know we work well together; we're good at watching each other's backs." Then he turned to Jessica, wanting her to know that, with her, he was also talking about something more than just fighting together.

"What about… last time? Kilgrave. Reva." It was obvious from the reluctance in her tone that Jessica didn't want to dig everything between them back up again.

Luke wasn't quite sure how to handle all of that either, but he wanted to try anyway. "I know. And I don't know if enough has changed for us, if _we've_ changed enough. But…" He stopped, not sure exactly what it was he wanted to ask her.

She seemed to figure it out though. "Okay. Maybe we—or I—won't fuck it up this time. What are the odds?" Her voice was laden with self-deprecation, but there was as close as Jessica came to a smile in it. They were on the same page. It was enough for now.

Luke stopped the car outside Matt's building. Carefully, he and Jessica got Matt into his apartment, together. Three allies in the fight none of them were willing to give up. And for he and Jessica, maybe something more. Maybe they could start over, again.


End file.
